


Breathing Room

by DreamsOfSleep



Series: Breathing Room AU [1]
Category: New Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Break Up, F/M, Road Trips, downer ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-26 15:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7579255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon Divergence for S3, Ep 20 "Mars Landing" </p><p>Nick Miller Logic: If they don't finish the fight, they aren't broken up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pause

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about Nick's breakup fight with Caroline and how he said if he didn't hear her, they weren't broken up. I thought that would be an interesting twist to throw into Nick and Jess's breakup fight in "Mars Landing."
> 
> This fic was also another excuse for me to send Nick and Jess on a road trip together, which I do love writing. I like the symmetry of it: their relationship had a big splashy beginning with running off to Mexico together so it naturally should have a big splashy ending as well. Or at the very least, it needed to end in a neutral space outside the loft so they had time to process all those messy feelings.

Nick doesn’t really remember how they ended up here.

They were hungover and they still had to go to some kid’s birthday party and he had to put together that torture device (AKA that kid’s birthday present) that Past Nick had procrastinated on (damn it, Past Nick!). A combination of being dangerously hungover and thinking about that kid’s birthday party must have done something weird to Jess’s brain because she started rambling on about their imaginary future son and them living in a lake house together. Then she started asking him all these scary questions about the future he wasn’t prepared to answer and suddenly they’re having the worst fight they’ve ever had.

She’s yelling at him about not having a life plan and he doesn’t know why that is suddenly so important to her. _So he’s not a planner, so what? He can figure shit out. He can take care of her, take care of them. He might not be so good at taking care of himself, but he knows how to take care of the people that matter to him. He doesn’t get why she doesn’t have any faith in him._

Then she’s telling him that they never agree on anything and he doesn’t think that’s true or fair. _All couples argue. It’s just a way of saying you care about another person loudly. Once you stop arguing, that’s when you have to worry, because that means you no longer care enough to fight for the other person. They’ve always had each other’s backs when it mattered and he doesn’t know why she can’t see that now._

She tells him that she can never be honest with him and that hurts, because he’s always honest with her. _She’s telling him that she doesn’t see him as an equal in this relationship, that he’s a liability to her, that she pities him, that she has to say things to protect his fragile ego._

He thinks she doesn’t know what she’s saying and she’s just spinning, making up reasons for them to break up because she finally sees that she was always way out of his league and she should be dating someone like a Sam or a Russell. He thought love was enough to make up the difference, but now she’s telling him it’s not. He knows. He’s always known he isn’t even half as good as those other guys, but can’t she see that he’s trying? He’s trying so hard to be better for her and he loves her and he doesn’t know why it isn’t enough. 

It had meant something then, her coming after him, her asking him to say yes to them and he’s trying to find his way back to that. He’s trying to find his way back to all those reasons she said yes to him before to combat all the reasons she’s saying no to them now. 

He reaches out to grasp her arm with his hand to get her to stop yelling at him.

“Why did you say ‘all in’ before, Jess?” he asks her in a quiet, broken voice.

The question doesn’t follow from the argument they were just having so it takes her brain a minute to catch up. “What?” she says to him, caught off-guard.

“Before we went to Mexico, at Cece’s wedding. Why did you want to uncall it?”

She’s trying desperately to remember, trying to place herself back at that point in time when it felt so important to get him to change his mind, to give them a chance, but it seems like a fantasy that had happened to other people who weren’t them. A fairytale moment when saying yes to each other meant everything would work out, when being together meant everything. But that wasn’t real…that was the easy stuff you see in romantic movies, the stuff that fades. That didn’t have anything to do with having a relationship out in The Real World. All that stuff they had just been arguing about, all the practical details of being in an actual relationship, _a life plan, common goals, a concrete future with marriage and kids and a house,_ that was what real relationships were built on. What were they even doing together? Just floating out here, hanging out together until they got sick of one another? There was nothing here to keep them together after all those initial mushy feelings went away.

She’s giving him a blank, desperate stare and not saying anything back to him and he can’t breathe all of a sudden. He sees the writing on the wall because she doesn’t even remember the reasons they’re together anymore. He lets go of her arm and he’s walking away from her looking for his keys. She’s following him around the room.

“Where are you going, Nick? We’re not done talking about this…” 

He puts his hands on either side of her shoulders and looks into her eyes. “I know we’re not done talking about this, but I can’t stand here and listen to you say those things to me another second…Just give me some breathing room, Jess. I have to get out of here.” 

It’s the middle of the night and he’s in his pajamas with a death grip on his car keys, running out of the loft and down the stairs and out into the night with Jess hot on his heels. 

“Where are you going, Nick?” she’s asking him again, her voice tight with anxiety, and he doesn’t fucking know. All he knows is that he can’t stay here. 

He doesn’t respond to that but opens the driver’s side door to his car and gets in. She opens the passenger side door and slides in next to him in the passenger seat. 

“Jess, I just need not to see you right now,” he says between gritted teeth. He’s gripping the steering wheel tightly, not looking at her, staring straight ahead through the windshield. This is him running, because as long as they don’t finish this fight, they won’t break up. He forces himself to calm down. “I’m just going to drive around the block,” he tells her in an approximation of his normal voice. He doesn’t think that’s actually true but it sounds logical. “I just need time to cool off, okay?” It’s a lie, but it sounds believable enough to get her to go back inside. 

But she’s not getting out because she knows he’s lying. She calls his bluff. “I’ll just sit here with you. I won’t say anything.” She’s not getting out, but they’re not in the loft anymore so he doesn’t think they’re going to finish their fight, so he turns on the ignition and just starts driving aimlessly down the LA streets around their apartment building. 

He drives really slowly for a really long time and Jess eventually ends up falling asleep next to him. Then he starts driving normally and gets on the highway. Before he knows it, he’s crossing the city limits. He doesn’t know where he’s even driving to, but his brain is still focused on the fact that as long as he keeps driving, they don’t have to go back home to finish their fight. Good thing it’s a Saturday night and neither of them have work tomorrow morning because he doesn’t think he’s physically able to turn the car around. He can only keep driving straight ahead. 

He sees the road signs for Vegas and thinks, _‘Why the hell not?’._

At least he’s driving somewhere instead of nowhere now. 


	2. Pancakes in Vegas

It’s 4AM and he sees Vegas just ahead. The city rises out of the empty desert like a neon oasis, its multicolored lights glowing against the night sky. He hasn’t ever been here before; he doesn’t think Jess has either. Why did he drive way the hell out here? It had seemed like a good idea 300 miles back, but he doesn’t know what they’re going to do now that they’re actually here. _Just turn around and drive home? Stop and spend the night? Keep going?_ Would a “life plan” have helped here? He doesn’t think a “life plan” covers bouts of temporary insanity. 

He thinks Jess is going to be pissed once she wakes up. He thinks back to all the yelling a few hours ago….or more than she was already pissed at him before anyway. He wonders if emotions are circular and he can just make her so angry that she won’t be angry at him anymore. Like if she gets all her anger out in one big rush then she’ll just be normal happy Jess again who always believes the best in people and then she’ll remember why she even loves him in the first place, if she ever did at all.

\---

He pulls into a parking garage and drives to the roof. He parks and turns off the ignition. The absence of the hum of the car engine eventually stirs Jess awake and she rubs sleep from her eyes. She looks out the windshield at the Las Vegas skyline, but she doesn’t seem mad even though they’re 300 miles from home in their pajamas at four in the morning. He gets out and sits on the hood of his car and she follows suit. They spend a few minutes sitting in silence looking out at the city sprawled out before them.

“Want to go get some pancakes, Jess?” he asks her because they haven’t eaten anything all day due to their fight.

“Okay,” she agrees.

\---

So they find a 24-hour diner and get pancakes because that seems like the thing to do when you’re in Vegas at four in the morning. No one in the diner even blinks an eye at the fact that they’re both in pajamas because it’s Vegas. 

The diner is a really cool place, all retro with red leather booths and individual chrome jukeboxes on all the tables. The pancakes are also really good, like the best pancakes Nick has ever eaten. _Little fluffy golden disks of heaven with real butter and real maple syrup stacked to the sky._ Jess flips through the jukebox menu and rearranges all the cut up fruit on her plate into neat piles so she can get equal amounts of pancake and all the different types of fruit in each bite. He can’t help finding that adorable.

It almost feels good again. Like this is just another funny anecdote they can share with each other in the future that no one else knows. _Remember that time we drove to Vegas at midnight just to get pancakes?_ One of those awesome ‘you had to be there’ stories that can only happen between you and your best friend. But then he remembers they’re on the verge of breaking up and he gets depressed again.

She notices when his mood shifts. She watches him push food around on his plate instead of eating it, his eyes downcast and lost in thought. She makes a smiley face out of the whipped cream and fruit on her plate and pushes it over to him. That makes him smile in spite of himself, even though he still feels shitty and sad inside. 

They finish their pancakes and get up to leave. Jess thinks it’s lucky that Nick had enough change in the cupholder of his car to pay for their meal because she definitely doesn’t have any cash on her since she didn’t plan to come to Vegas on Nick’s spur-of-the-moment freakout. She’s glad she’s here with him now though, glad she stayed in the car with him. They might be almost not-a-couple, but she still feels the impulse to take care of him. If he’s spinning out, she’s going to be there to pull him back in.

\---

They go back to the parking garage and get back in Nick’s car. His hands grip the steering wheel tightly, but he doesn’t make any motion to put his keys in the ignition to drive them home. They end up just sitting in his car staring straight ahead out the windshield, not looking at each other. She sneaks a glance at him out of the corner of her eye and his face is a blank mask. 

It reminds her of how he was when she first met him, closed off from the world. But it’s different too. Before he was trying to keep all his feelings in and now it feels like he wants to let all these feelings out. But he’s trying to keep it together because he’ll fragment apart if he does that. He’s a ticking time bomb and she’s the bomb squad with the nuclear codes trying to disarm him and stop him from hurting himself. 

If he’s not ready to go home yet, she’ll wait for him as long as it takes. She closes her eyes and curls up on the passenger seat.

\---

Nick knows they should just go home, but he really doesn’t want to do that yet. He knows what’s waiting for them there. His mind floats to the “go-bag” in his car. He’s kind of a conspiracy nut so that’s a thing he has. It always makes him feel good knowing he has that stashed in his car so that he can leave at a moment’s notice, but he’s never actually had to use it before. No one knows about it but him, but he’s actually always had a “go-bag” in one form or another since he was a kid. In his mind, Nick thinks he’s always been running from something. It’s kind of sad that the only thing that he’s ever been prepared for in his entire life was people leaving him, but that’s the only thing he’s ever been able to count on. The “go-bag” is just a way for him to feel in control, to be the one doing the leaving, instead of being the one left behind. He doesn’t have a life plan, but he definitely has an escape plan. 

\---

They’ve just been sitting in the car in silence for a long while when Nick leans over and reaches under the backseat. She feels him move so she opens her eyes and watches him. He pulls out a beat-up backpack from under the seat. He opens it and starts taking things out of it and tossing them onto the backseat. It’s like a survivalist’s wet dream: _MREs, swiss army knives, road flares, extra sets of clothes, first aid kits._ She’s never seen this bag before. It’s like he was thinking of going camping, but he’s never talked about that before so she doesn’t know what that’s about. When the backpack is empty, he opens a secret compartment inside of it and pulls out a large wad of cash and an ATM card. Her eyes widen in surprise. He shrugs at her. 

She thought maybe Nick was going to have another freakout, but he looks remarkably calm. He’s preternaturally calm and not at all freaked out or panicky like she expected him to be once the realization set in that he just drove them 300 miles to Vegas for no reason. He’s acting like they end up in Vegas at 4AM all the time. She watches him in fascinated confusion.

He gets out of the car and pockets the cash and ATM card in his sweatpants. He leans back down to stick his head into the open driver’s side door. “Come on,” he says to her. He has his Nick Miller idea face on, all determination and dark-eyed intensity. He closes the driver’s side door and walks a short distance away from the car and looks back at her expectantly.

She doesn’t know what’s going on but Nick is there so she feels safe. She gets out of the car to follow him. She doesn’t really know where his head is at, but if he’s going to do something crazy, she’s going to do something crazy right along with him because he’s still Nick and she’s still Jess and that’s what they do when they’re together. As long as they _are_ actually still together, at least. _One last great adventure together as NickandJess, before they have to return to leading their separate lives as Nick and Jess, platonic friends who tried being a couple but didn’t work._

When she gets to his side, he reaches out to hold her hand and she lets him.

They walk out of the parking garage and out on to the Las Vegas Strip.


	3. Dressed to the Nines

They’re walking down the Las Vegas Strip when Nick pulls her into an open boutique.

Inside she is dazzled by the vast array of fancy formalwear. The left side of the store has row after row of neatly pressed suits and tuxedos with perfectly starched collars and matching ties and bowties with coordinating pocket squares. The right side of the store has beautiful designer dresses as far as the eye can see in every style and cut and shade of the rainbow. It looks like a really expensive place and she feels awkward and slightly embarrassed to be in here wearing her pink cotton pajamas. 

The store is empty save for an elderly gray-haired gentleman sitting on a stool behind the counter reading a newspaper. The man looks up when he hears the chime of the bells as the glass doors open. The man is dressed conservatively in a light blue button-down shirt with a gray vest and a red tie. He is wearing spectacles and has a cloth measuring tape around his shoulders, tools of his trade. He reminds Nick of a stern version of Tran. Nick lets go of her hand to go up to the counter to talk to the man. “I’m looking to spend a night out on the town with my girl. Think you can dress us out?”

The man gives Nick the once-over, shaking his head and sighing disapprovingly like Nick's attire personally offends him. Then he comes out from behind the counter and pulls Nick over to the platform at the three-sided mirror and starts measuring him. He goes around the store selecting different fabrics and holding them up against Nick. Nick can see the cogs turning in the man’s head, his mind running through a hundred different micro-decisions with a laser-focused precision. The man mutters to himself under his breath but never asks Nick his opinion on anything. Nick guesses the guy doesn’t trust him to make any choices on his own since he did just show up to his store in his pajamas. But that’s okay because the man just seems to know what will look good on him, just like how Tran knows exactly what to say to him whenever Nick asks him for advice without having to say a single word. Before long, he’s all dressed to the nines in a perfectly tailored suit that fits him like a glove and is fancier than anything he’s ever owned in his entire life. The man stands back and nods approvingly. The man waves Jess over to get her approval too.

\---

Jess had been hanging back near the store entrance, just watching the tailor work his magic. When his hard work is complete and he waves her over, she approaches Nick at the mirrors to get a closer look at his new suit. “You look really good, Nick,” she says sincerely. She really likes this look on him. She likes Casual Nick when he’s dressed down in his usual flannel and jeans, but she rarely sees him all dressed up in a suit and the contrast is always striking. 

Casual Nick is the guy you can always count on to be there, the guy who shows up without you having to ask, someone you want to come home to after a long day and cuddle up with on rainy Sunday mornings. He's comfortable and unpretentious but also insecure and unsure of himself, the guy who doesn't do things unless he knows the outcome. Suited-Up Nick oozes confidence. This is the guy who knows what he wants, the guy who passed the bar just to prove he could, the guy who takes chances, someone Nick doesn't let himself be too often but is always spectacular to see in real life when he actually does make an appearance. She likes seeing all these different sides of Nick Miller. It reminds her of how he had kissed her that night after True American to get her to see him differently and how it was like she was really seeing him for the first time. She likes that he can still surprise her after knowing him for all these years. It reminds her that there is still a lot about him that she doesn’t know yet, but she would really like to find out. Then she remembers that he doesn’t have a life plan so he’s not the guy for her and in the future it will probably be some other girl finding out all these secret hidden things about him instead of her. Nick smiles warmly at her though so she pushes away the bad feelings for Future Jess to deal with later. 

“Thanks, Jess. I clean up nice, I guess?” he says modestly, absentmindedly adjusting his cufflinks. There’s the look of affection in her eyes and he wonders if she could ever imagine him as the guy she sees herself next to in some distant future even though he’s not a guy with a life plan and will probably never be that guy. Someone she might still want to call _her_ guy even though he’s a screwup and not a functional adult. He might not be that guy tomorrow, but at least he’ll be that guy tonight. He looks the part at least, like a guy who has his life together enough to get a fancy suit like this and show her a good time taking her out on the town.

The tailor does a whistle. _One high note, one low note._ Two seamstresses come out of the back of the store and the tailor gestures to Jess. They drag Jess to the other side of the store to get her dressed too. “Get any one you want, Jess,” Nick calls after her.

\---

The seamstresses bring her a whole slew of evening dresses to try on so she can find the one she likes best. They ooh and ahh over her and tell her she has the perfect figure. They make her feel like a fancy movie star or a high-class fashion model. She’s not really a girl who ever gets noticed much for her looks, always the bookish nerd or the cute, socially awkward friend, so it makes her feel shy at the same time it makes her feel flattered. 

They’re in Vegas so she feels like taking a risk. She tries on that red, floor-length satin evening gown with the plunging neckline and the dangerous slit up the thigh that shows an ample amount of leg. It’s not something she would normally wear, but she just wanted to try it on to see what it felt like to be the kind of person who would wear something like that. It feels like the kind of night to try something bold. She doesn’t notice Nick coming into the dressing room to stand next to the seamstresses to watch her try on dresses. 

\---

Jess is drop-dead gorgeous wearing that red dress. It makes her look classy and sexy and sweet and makes him think about everything he loves about her. He feels it hit him painfully in the chest all at once. He can’t help wanting to wrap his arms around her and pretend she’s still his. Well, she _is_ still his now so he reminds himself that he gets to do that for as long as they’re still together. He approaches her as she is lost in thought looking at herself in the three-way mirror.

\---

Nick comes up behind her and hugs her to him, his arms going around her waist and his chin resting on her shoulder holding her close to him. He tells her she looks gorgeous and that’s the one she should get. It’s such a sweet, boyfriend-y gesture that it makes her eyes tear up a little and she gets a lump in her throat. The seamstresses aww at them and tell them they make a cute couple. Nick smiles at that, but Jess can see it’s a little sad in his reflection in the mirror. He lets go of her and takes a step back. He stops touching her and puts space in between them, not meeting her eyes in the mirror. 

\---

Nick goes to pay the tailor for their new clothes. He reaches out to hold her hand again at the store entrance and she can tell his mood is up again. “Let’s go paint the town red,” he says to her with a devilish grin. 


	4. Nick Miller and His Lady Luck

They’re walking down the Vegas Strip dressed to kill and it makes people turn their heads to look at them. That makes Nick feel really good, all lit up and wired inside, like everyone sees them as a power couple out for a night on the town. Nick pretends they’re in a classic Hollywood movie where all the men wear suits and all the women wear dresses and he’s some debonair George Clooney type with Jess on his arm as his Lady Luck. He’s feeling young and reckless, looking to get into some trouble in the city. The world’s his oyster, the night alive with possibilities. 

\---

He takes her to The Venetian. It’s an old-school place, ritzy and high-end, and not one of those cheesy, piss-poor excuses for casinos out on the Strip that look like they are all stuck in some bad ‘70s time warp and full of sloppy drunk tourists. He’s got money to burn and he remembers his dad once told him that there was good poker here with a lot of bad players so he thinks they can have a lot of fun tonight burning through his cash.

The inside of The Venetian is breathtaking with marble hallways and high-vaulted ceilings. They just stand next to each other in the lobby for a few minutes, taking it all in: _the majestic Italian-inspired architecture, the intricate frescoes painted on the ceilings, the domed skylight of the garden atrium with the cascading waterfall._ Nick leads her by the hand to the reflecting pool underneath the waterfall. He reaches into his pocket and takes out two coins. He hands one over to her. He closes his eyes and makes a wish before tossing it in. She watches him before mirroring his actions and doing the same. They walk down the hallway and into the casino hand in hand.

\---

Jess wants to start at the penny slots. She says it’s because pulling levers is fun and she likes looking at all the colorful reels, but he thinks she’s really trying to protect him from blowing all his money. He indulges her though and watches her play. It’s kind of hypnotic watching the spinning reels after a while even if you never win, so Nick can see how people could get addicted to that. After her twentieth pull, her slot machine actually pays out. Her reels all line up (3 cherries all in a row) and her machine plays the triumphant music of a win. Jess whoops in delight as the coins spill out and he helps her scoop them into paper cups. He looks into her eyes and sees she’s caught the gambling bug so he is able to convince her to try some of the table games with him instead of sitting at the slots all night. 

\---

He teaches her how to play poker and blackjack using all the tricks his dad taught him way back when he was a kid. He wins some, he loses more, but it’s really fun. He’s not really concerned that all his money is dwindling at an alarming rate, even though in the back of his mind he knows he probably should be. He knows he really shouldn’t be blowing all his emergency cash here, but what the hell. When they go home, he knows they’re going to break up so it’s pretty much the end of the world anyway, might as well live it up while he still has the chance. 

It’s the Nick and Jess End of the World Tour, one last big blowout where they pretend they’re still a couple and everything is peachy-keen in Miller-Day Couple Land before the world ends. 

They go over to the craps table and he places a few losing bets. He asks Jess which number he should pick for his next bet and she tells him to pick 8. She says she likes that sideways eights are also infinities. She kisses the back of his hand holding the dice for luck before he tosses them. When he wins, he leans in to her to whisper, “Don’t go anywhere, Jess. You’re my good luck charm.” 

\---

They’ve been in the casino for about an hour gambling away all the money in his bank account. He sees Jess sneak a glance at the clock. It’s 6AM already and the sun is probably coming up right about now. He can see in Jess’s eyes that she’s going to suggest they start heading out now to go home since it’s really late and he still has some of his money left. The angel on his right shoulder says, _‘You’ve had your fun. Time to get out while you’re still ahead.’_ But he’s still not ready to leave yet. He needs to spend more time with Jess while she’s still his girlfriend, while they are still together as a couple. The devil on his left shoulder makes him pull her over to the high-roller table for one last round of poker. 

“If I win, we have to stay another hour, Jess,” he says throwing down the gauntlet. 

He can see Jess is nervous that he is about to lose all his money, but she doesn’t really want to go home either. Normal Jess would probably scold him for doing something so stupid and reckless, try to talk him out of it, but Vegas Jess just buys him a martini at the bar and kisses his cheek for luck as he pulls up a chair to the table. The dealer deals him in. 

\---

He does a passable job during the first few hands, not great but not terrible, holding his own among all these seasoned gamblers. Then he hits a hot streak of lucky hands and players start folding around him. Before long it unexpectedly comes down to just him and one other grizzled gentleman sitting across from him at the table with the stone-cold poker face. The man has an impressive mustache and is wearing a dark pin-striped suit with a silver tie and a gray vest. He has an expensive Rolex on his wrist. He’s basically the walking stereotype of every expert gambler ever. He’s been playing aggressively, throwing down thousand dollar bets like they’re nothing, trying to rattle Nick with his Ocean’s Eleven cool. Nick knows he’s basically screwed, but he stares the guy down. He orders a tumbler of whiskey and raises his glass to the man before downing it in one gulp and slamming it down on the table. _Game on._

A moderately large crowd has gathered around the table to see if this rookie can beat this veteran gambler. Nick thinks he should be nervous but he’s very zen about it. His fate was already sealed when he sat down at the table. _Whatever is going to happen, is going to happen._ It’s Nick Miller fighting The Universe on a wing and a prayer like always.

\---

His hot streak has turned into a losing streak. It looks like his luck has run out. It’s his last hand and he pretty much has a handful of nothing. It’s impossibly long odds for him to win; he basically needs a miracle at this point. But he looks up at Jess standing next to him biting her nails and he goes all in, double or nothing. He probably (read: definitely) won’t win, but it’s that kind of night. This is him believing in them as a couple in spite of everything, in spite of the entire universe telling him all the reasons they shouldn’t be together. It’s the end of the world so he doesn’t really care if he loses all his money or doesn’t win that crazy huge pot before him. He is actually more upset at the fact that if he loses they have to go home and his crazy night with Jess will be over. They’ll probably never get to do anything like this again. They’ll still be in each other’s lives, but only in the loosest sense. Exes can’t be friends, not really. There will always be a wall between them after. There will be a part of each other they’ll never be able to share with each other again because there will be a mutual understanding between them that they are no longer the most important people in each other’s lives, or they shouldn’t be anyway. They’ll both get into relationships with other people and he won’t be able to wake her up in the middle of the night to go to Vegas for no reason. He sighs sadly to himself. They had to go home eventually. It’s not like they could just live here forever, no matter how much he would like them to.

He stands up and pushes his chair in. He’s on pins and needles holding the back of the chair waiting for the dealer to turn the cards. If he’s going out, he’s going out in style at least. Losing spectacularly in the way only Nick Miller can. 

No one is more shocked than him when he actually wins. A gasp comes up from the crowd when the dealer turns the last card. He furrows his brow at it in confusion and then he looks up at the stunned face of the guy sitting across from him, the only time the guy has broken the whole game. Then people around the table start clapping and cheering for him. Jess shouts “You won, Nick!” in glee, jumping up and down next to him before pulling him in for a big hug and that’s when it becomes real. _‘Holy shit,’_ he thinks to himself. _‘Someone up there must like me.’_

The gentleman is gracious in defeat. He comes around the table to shake Nick’s hand. “Good game, kid. You’re a dark horse.” He isn’t angry, doesn’t hold a grudge against Nick for swiping what should have been a guaranteed win from him. He knows how these things go, tonight just wasn’t his night. That’s the beauty and madness of Vegas, fortunes won and lost in the blink of an eye. He puts his hat back on and tips it to Jess as he leaves the table. Nick squeezes her hand and leans in to whisper, “I knew you were lucky, Jess.”

Nick buys a round of drinks for everyone at the table. He raises his glass and says, “To one hell of a night,” and everyone raises their glasses and toasts him back.

It’s been one hell of a night and it’s not even half over.


	5. Miracles and the Existence of Other Universes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from the Matt Nathanson song ["Miracles"](https://youtu.be/A1Q7HS_pScc)

Once he cashes out his chips, Nick gives Jess a piggyback ride around the casino and back through the lobby to get out all his adrenaline. They are both giddy, riding the incredible, euphoric high of his win. His face hurts from smiling but he never wants to stop. Jess is hugging herself tightly to him, the warmth of her draped over his shoulders and down his back, and she just throws her head back and laughs and laughs, not a care in the entire fucking world. He can feel the music of her laughter vibrating through his entire body as he weaves through the early morning crowds. A lot of people stop and stare at them. That would usually make him self-conscious, but he can’t bring himself to care if everybody thinks he’s crazy because he can tell that Jess is truly, genuinely happy being with him in this moment so it doesn’t matter if the rest of the world thinks he’s insane. The universe is smiling down at him right now and it has just granted him another hour of bliss in paradise where he can pretend that the only thing that matters is that he’s young and crazy in love with this beautiful angel before he has to go back home to face the reality that he’s already lost her. 

\---

He sets Jess back down on her feet outside the glass doors of the front entrance and she climbs off his back gracefully. “What do you want to do now, Nick?” she asks him. He doesn’t respond to that right away. He seems distracted. He’s turned away from her looking at the neon lights further down the road, lost in thought. He doesn’t seem sad like he was in the diner. He’s just thinking, caught up in a random train of thought. It feels significant, like Nick is trying to work through something in his head, so she’s patient and waits for him to make up his mind about where the winds of fate should take them next.

\---

Jess is trusting him to be in control of their destiny but he hasn’t thought that far ahead to what should happen next. A part of his brain still hasn’t caught up to the fact that they don’t have to go home yet; it’s still stuck somewhere back there at that poker table waiting for the cruel inevitability of the universe to send him home. He knew the entire time that it was a stupid decision to bet his life savings on a doomed game of high-stakes poker, but he still did it because it meant he could keep Jess _his_ a little while longer. It was a chance to try for her so he had to take it, even though he knew it was a losing battle. He would still bet everything on _them_ even though he knew it was useless, even though he knew it meant he was headed for certain peril, the deck so incredibly stacked against him that he had already lost before he even sat down at the table. 

He thinks about the existence of multiple universes, the different strands of cause and effect creating all the different possibilities of his life spanning out across the vastness of space and time. A version of himself in another universe had lost everything at that table. He thinks that was what was supposed to happen. But in the universe he is currently living in, something had saved him. It feels like someone had yanked him back from running into oncoming traffic, that sudden heart-racing panic followed by intense relief. In short, an honest-to-goodness miracle. He believes in a lot of crazy things, but he has never really believed in miracles. Life is generally shitty so it's hard to believe in good things. Good things don't just happen. You have to work really, really hard for them to happen and even then there is no guarantee of anything. But he has to believe in miracles now since he’s currently living one at this very moment. If ever there were a time to believe in the existence of miracles, that time is now.

But the more he thinks about it, the more paranoid and suspicious he becomes of the outcome that he is currently living and of everything that has happened tonight. No one is that lucky, certainly not him. ‘Lucky’ for him is breaking even on rent every month. Having his car start when he turns the key in the ignition and not needing someone to push him half a block to start it. Having something he fancy-fixed in the loft last another day without falling apart, held together by inertia and sheer force of will. Small scale stuff that regular people who are functional adults never even think about but he knows are lucky for someone like him, a guy without a life plan who is just making shit up as he goes along, someone who is just struggling to make it through to the next week of his life. ‘Lucky’ for him doesn’t include winning six figures at the high-roller table in Vegas and getting to take his dream girl to live out some fantasy dream vacation with him. For him, that probably ranks somewhere between winning the New York City Marathon and curing cancer, something so far beyond the realm of possibility for him in this lifetime he can’t even comprehend it. 

He turns the word _dream_ over in his head. That’s what all of this could be…some whacked out dream. In reality, he and Jess might have already finished their fight back in the loft, broken up for real, and then just went into their separate rooms to sleep. If that’s true, his body is currently back in LA dreaming about Vegas in freakishly vivid detail. That seems more logical than whatever is currently happening now. Maybe his mind blocked out the end of their fight. Maybe it erased all the images of their inevitable ugly breakup from his memory to hide the truth from himself. If that actually happened, he definitely wouldn’t want to remember it. But it’s equally disturbing to think about the fact that his mind would just make shit up to fill in the blanks, his brain creating a pseudo-reality and faking happiness with endorphins and serotonin because he can’t deal with the reality of heartbreak, can’t deal with the fact that everything between him and Jess was a lie and she could just fall out of love with him when he’s still so in love with her it hurts.

\---

He turns back to Jess to ask her something that only Real Jess would know to figure out if this is a dream or not, but his mind had gotten stuck, suddenly captivated by her face the way he gets sometimes when he isn’t expecting it. _It’s real._ He knows because her eyes never look quite right when he dreams about her. Dream Jess looks like Real Jess and touches him like Real Jess does and whispers all these sweet things to him that Real Jess might say, but she never quite feels like Real Jess to him. He can just tell. Only Real Jess can make him feel the way he does when he’s looking right into her eyes. Dream Jess is a poor approximation of Real Jess, like how other women are to him when Jess is around. Everyone else is in black and white when she is living, breathing technicolor next to him. 

The woman standing next to him is indescribably Jess in the way he can’t stop looking at her. The early morning light has turned her irises this incredible shade of deep, bright blue and he is overcome by the sudden urge to kiss her. He reaches out to cup her cheek with his hand. She doesn’t pull away from him so he leans in close until their foreheads are touching. Her eyes are drawn down to his lips before looking back up into his eyes and her breath hitches in anticipation of their lips meeting. He really wants to kiss her, but something inside of him makes him stop himself from crossing the remaining distance to press his mouth to hers. He thinks if he kisses her that will ruin whatever is going on between them right now. He hasn’t kissed her since before their fight and he doesn’t want to know if kissing her now is different. Their faces remain close together, their lips almost touching. She blinks at him when she realizes he isn’t going to kiss her. 

His hand strokes her cheek tenderly. He whispers to her, “I’m going to take my favorite girl to the best bar in Vegas.” His breath ghosts across her skin and makes shivers run through her.

He doesn’t kiss her, but she leans in and her lips briefly catch the corner of his mouth before he steps back and turns his face away from her. He reaches out to take her hand as they continue down the Vegas Strip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to cut to Nick and Jess celebrating at the bar after the last chapter, but decided to throw in a "not like this" scene since I had the Neil Hilborn poem ["OCD"](https://youtu.be/vnKZ4pdSU-s) on my mind, specifically the line: _"Now I just think about who else is kissing her. I can't breathe because he only kisses her once; he doesn't care if it's perfect."_


	6. Shaken, Not Stirred

He takes her to The Chandelier Lounge to celebrate his victory. It’s a really swanky, upscale place, all done up in sleek glass and polished black granite. Every inch drips with class and sophistication. Spiral staircases separate the different levels of the bar and every floor has a different signature drink. Stunning drapes of shimmering crystal beads hang down from the ceiling so it feels like they are walking inside a living, breathing chandelier. The curtains of crystal beads twinkle and glitter as they catch the lavender lights. Moving through the room feels otherworldly like they are traveling through waterfalls of light. 

The atmosphere makes it feel like it is still nighttime inside with all its splendor and magic and mystique. Nick pretends the twinkle and glitter of the crystals above them are the canvas of a star-filled night sky, even though he feels the pulse of time within him. They haven’t stumbled upon a secret world that has been frozen in time to a perfect moment. Time is still moving forward whether he wants it to or not, the relentless sun making its slow ascent upwards across the sky outside the bar and stealing all the remaining seconds he gets to spend alone with Jess when he can still call her his and they can still belong to each other. He pushes away the sick feeling of dread within himself and just focuses on her face, on the solid feel of her hand in his. She’s here with him now and she’s happy.

This is a place Jess deserves to go, where Regular Nick Miller could never afford to take her. But right now he is Baller Nick Miller who is flush with cash from betting his entire life savings on a stupidly lucky game of poker and he feels the warm glow of happiness within himself that he gets to do this for her, bring her to a high-class place like this and show her that good life that will always elude him. He puts his hand on the small of her back to guide her to the bar. 

\---

They find seats at a quiet corner of the bar. Jess reads all the weird gimmicky names for cocktails off the menu and decides to get something called “The Cat’s Pajamas,” a 1920s-inspired gin cocktail made with lemon juice and honey. It calls to mind the era of Prohibition, a time when the world was a sea of speakeasies, illicit bars hidden in plain sight, where people would come out all dressed up in their Sunday best to drink and dance and the men who ran them were kings. She offers him a sip but it’s too sweet for him. He tells the bartender he's having a good night and to make him a drink that tastes like bad decisions. He usually hates when bars try to make fad versions of classic drinks, but he’s in a good mood so he lets the young and annoyingly chipper bartender talk him into getting “The Infinite Playlist," the bar’s modern spin on the old-fashioned. They make it with aged rum instead of whiskey like he normally would, but Nick really likes it. He thinks about going home and making it at The Griffin. He thinks fleetingly about an imaginary future where he owns his own bar and can name all the drinks on the menu whatever crazy things he wants. He would name a signature drink after every one of his friends. Jess would probably be some fizzy pink wine cocktail, totally uncharacteristic and out of place among all the hard liquors on the menu that a coal miner would drink, but he would still keep it on there because Jess would always order that when she came into his bar. He would have a special rotating menu of fizzy pink wine cocktails just for her. 

\---

He’s sitting at the bar staring into his drink, swirling it around in the tumbler. He’s humming that Barry Manilow song “Copacabana” to himself quietly under his breath for some reason. It’s an incongruously upbeat song for the tragic tale it tells, but it seems apt for where they are tonight so it’s been stuck in his head providing the soundtrack for the night. He doesn’t know why, but memories of his dad keep surfacing and floating through his mind. They have been all night ever since they were sitting in the car. When he was sitting there next to Jess staring out at the the city spread out below them, he could see the two paths the night could take diverging in front of him. One where he could just decide to take them home or the other where he could just decide…not to. His dad had been the devil on his shoulder then who made him take that chance and choose that risky path instead of the safe one of just going home.

This is the most he’s thought about his dad since the funeral. It’s probably because they’re in Vegas, which is pretty much a scammers’ paradise, and that’s what his dad was. The ultimate conman. Nick remembers how his dad used to fill his head with stories of Vegas all the time when he was a kid and Walt would tell him how he was going to take him there when he turned 21.

But by the time his 21st birthday actually rolled around his dad was gone again. Nick was lucky if he even got to see him once a year, let alone on birthdays, and they never got around to taking that trip together. It had still hurt even though he was pretty used to his dad breaking promises to him by then. He thought his dad would at least show up for his 21st birthday, that he would be there for that even if he missed everything else. He hadn’t known why he had gotten his hopes up. He remembers that he had gone home to Chicago that weekend. He had sat up in the living room waiting up for his dad well past midnight, hoping against hope that maybe this time Walt would finally show up and he has that same familiar feeling in his gut now. _Hoping for something that can’t ever happen._ Not in this lifetime anyway. Maybe in some crazy parallel dimension where good things happen to you if you want them enough. He should be used to that feeling by now, the acute feeling of loss, of dashed expectations, but Nick thinks it’s not something you ever really get used to. Everyone needs something to hope for, even if it’s a false hope, and you can’t help chasing the idea of happiness, even when you know it’s a lie. The alcohol dulls the pain a little, softens the edges of it. It makes him feel nostalgic about things ending, about people leaving him.

He can feel the weight of Jess’s gaze on him, watching him like she has been all night. He looks over into her worried expression. He wants to tell her he’s okay but he doesn’t know if that’s true and he doesn’t know if that will sound true to her. If he says that, it will break the illusion, leave an opening for her to pull at the thread of _‘not okay’_ that he doesn’t want to get into right now. He wants the only thing to exist right now to be him and her and this private corner of the bar. They’re celebrating and he doesn’t want her to be sad, to taint the memory of one of the best, craziest nights of their lives together with the truth of harsh realities. He gives her a crooked half-smile.

“Hey Jess, did I ever tell you about the time my dad snuck us into Wrigley Field to play baseball at night?” he asks her out of the blue. 

She smiles back at him, leans into him intrigued. Nick never talks about his dad so she knows it’s something special he wants to share with her.

===

_When Nick turned eight, all he had wanted for his birthday was to go to a Cubs game with his dad. That was all he had wanted, to spend a day with his dad rooting on their favorite team. Something that might have seemed ordinary to everyone else but felt like an extraordinary luxury to him, to have one day of his dad’s full undivided attention where he wouldn’t make up some excuse to leave. But the day had come and gone._

 _On his birthday, his Ma had thrown him a surprise party and all their relatives had come over. She made the fancy chocolate cake for him that she only made on extra-special occasions and when it came time to open presents she handed him a fancy gift-wrapped box with his dad’s name signed to the card in her handwriting. It was some fancy game system he couldn’t care less about that his dad had probably gotten in one of his numerous shady business dealings. He pasted on a smile for his Ma, but he had only been eight so he hadn’t been able to hide his disappointment as well as he could when he was older. His Ma hugged him tightly to her, “I’m sorry, Nicky,” she whispered to him. He had dug his fingernails into his palms so he wouldn’t cry. His Ma gave him an extra slice of chocolate cake that he managed to choke down. He pretended to have a nice time for the rest of the party because he knew his Ma spent all that hard work organizing it for him so he wouldn’t be sad that his dad wasn’t there. He told himself that it didn’t matter at all, that his dad hadn’t forgotten about him but that he had some special, super-important reason he couldn’t be there at his party, some secret reason that he would tell Nick all about in the future when he was older about why he was always missing at every single important event in Nick’s life, but it hadn't worked. It had crushed him. He was eight and he was old enough to know that it’s not what you say, it’s what you do that really mattered. And for all his dad’s fancy promises, when the chips were really down, his dad never bothered to show up._

\---

_A few weeks after his 8th birthday, Nick found himself being shaken awake in the middle of the night. Bleary-eyed, he stared into the familiar face of his father._

_“Hey, Nicky," his dad whispered to him. "I have a surprise for you.”_

_Nick wanted to turn over and go back to sleep, but he found himself being picked up and carried out of bed in the middle of the night by his dad to his waiting car. Well that was his dad in a nutshell, an irrepressible force of nature whenever he did decide to show up, so Nick had to go along with whatever crazy scheme his dad had cooked up. He curled up in the passenger seat and fell back asleep as his dad drove them off into the night._

\---

_When he woke up again, they were parked in front of the familiar marquee of Wrigley Field._

_Nick rubbed sleep from his eyes. “What are we doing here, Dad?” he rasped out._

_“I thought you might like to play a little catch with your Old Man,” his dad grinned at him._

_Nick wanted to be angry at him. His dad was always doing this, showing up whenever he wanted to, thinking he could give Nick some big present to make up for all those times he wasn’t there when Nick didn’t need another secondhand apology. All he needed was to see his dad make the effort to actually show up when he was supposed to be there. But his dad was here now and they were both here on that hallowed ground so he pushed the anger down deep inside himself and gave his dad a hug instead._

_“I’m sorry, I missed your party, Nicky,” his dad whispered into his neck._

_“It’s okay, Dad.”_

_“I wanted to be there. It was just business, you know.”_

_“Yeah, Dad, I know.”_

_Outside the car, he let his dad take his hand to lead him into the stadium._

\---

_They take turns pitching from the mound. He and his dad are both excellent at make-believe so they can both imagine it is a perfect summer afternoon with cheering fans filling the empty stands. Players in the dugouts are getting restless, anxious for a chance to score some runs. The sports commentators sitting in the press box are feeling optimistic today while providing their usual running baseball commentary._

_“It’s the bottom of the ninth. Bases are loaded and the game is all tied up. The World Series is on the line and the Cubs just need one more run to win it all. But wait…looks like they’re sending in their new guy, The Rookie. Number 8, Nick Miller, stepping up to the plate. Let’s see if the kid has what it takes. Can the Cubs finally do it? Is this their year?”_

_His dad tosses him a fastball down the middle of the plate and Nick manages to hit it. It lands somewhere deep in center field but his dad runs towards him and scoops him into his arms anyway. “Look at that ball go! That thing is gone! Cubs win! Cubs win!” his dad shouts out gleefully. Nick imagines the deafening roar of the crowds from the bleachers as he snags that imaginary victory for their beloved Chicago Cubs. He sits tall on his dad’s shoulders as his dad rounds the bases with him. It’s just him and his dad and the stadium lights against the dark._

\---

It’s one of his favorite memories of being with his dad. It’s something secret they share that he has never told anyone else until now. Not Schmidt. Not Winston. Not even his Ma or his younger brother Jamie. He thinks it’s everything in a nutshell of why he loved his dad. His dad was always doing these crazy big exciting gestures for him, the kind of gestures people are always doing in the movies that are supposed to mean they love you and that you’re special, even though in real life it probably meant someone in your life that was supposed to love you had really screwed up or screwed you over and needed that big gesture to cover up their mistake. It was always just enough to keep him coming back for more and loving his dad even when his dad was missing more often than he was there, feeding himself on scraps of his dad’s love even when it wasn’t enough to sustain him, even when he would have preferred a regular, boring dad like his friends’ dads who would never do any of the crazy big exciting gestures his dad did but were always there and who would always show up when they told you they were going to be there. He hasn’t told anyone else that story until now, but Jess is always asking about his childhood so it feels right to share this with her now before it’s too late.

And as hard as it is to talk about the shitty parts of his childhood, for some reason, it feels even harder to share the good parts, like talking about them diminishes them somehow and lets people steal something special about them from you. In Nick’s experience, the instant you’re happy or you think you are, is the instant things get taken from you. But he wants her to have it since this is probably the last time he’ll be able to tell her.

===

Once he tells her that story it must uncork something in him, because a whole bunch of other stories come tumbling out of him too. He tells her funny stories about his dad’s scams, the good ones about scamming assholes who deserved it and not the shitty ones where Walt let him take the heat and he had to fake a diabetic seizure so they could get away. He tells her good stories from the childhood he rarely talks about, a glimpse into who Nick Miller used to be, giving her more puzzle pieces to complete the image of who Nick Miller is, what he came from and how he came to be. 

They’re in their own private world at this corner of the bar, tipsy and laughing into each other, two people comfortable in that rare way that is so hard to define. He’s sitting close to her and he keeps reaching out to touch her when he’s talking, _his hand warm on her knee, his fingers grazing the bare skin of her arm, his hand covering hers, his thumb stroking the back of it._ She lets him touch her since that seems to make him happy, even though it feels a little dangerous to let him continue doing that with her when they both know what has to happen in the near future.

Sometimes there is a lull in the conversation and he gets quiet watching himself touch her like he’s trying to remember it, memorize the feel of his skin against her skin. His eyes are dark and closed to her then, lost somewhere in himself where she can’t reach him. But when he catches her looking at him during one of those times, he’ll just paste on a smile again and tell her another funny anecdote to distract her. He has a manic glint in his eyes, the words pouring out of him at a fever pace like his mind is trying to outrun itself. She can feel the erratic energy coming off of him, the sudden up and down mood shifts like he’s on something, alternating moods happy and sad all at the same time giving her emotional whiplash even through the haze of alcohol. She can see the cracks forming in his Nick Miller armor, him fragmenting apart with the highs of the night fading out. She knows he's going to fall apart sooner rather than later and she'll be here to catch all the pieces of him and put him back together again when it happens. But for right now she just listens, lets him touch her to let him know she's here. Because that's what he needs from her right now.

\---

His MO is drinking to forget but Nick actually wants to remember everything about tonight so he nurses his drink and gets nicely warm and tipsy but doesn’t actually get drunk. He’s been pacing himself pretty well, keeping himself on the good side of tipsy and never crossing that line to full-on sloppy drunk. Even though a part of him really wants to drink until he blacks out every time he thinks about breaking up, he reins the impulse in.

Nick knows they’re still right smack dab in the middle of their fight but it feels like it’s paused currently while they're having fun hanging out together in Vegas.

He only had her for a year. He wished he had made more memories with her. _Should have, could have, would have._ All the things he regrets that are too numerous to name now. Why didn’t they take more trips together when they were a couple? Nick doesn’t remember. Maybe because he was always broke, but he thinks that’s just an excuse and he just got too comfortable living at home with her. Not comfortable, _complacent._ He got lazy just like he got lazy with Caroline or any other relationship he has ever had in his life, only really putting in the effort when he knows he's losing her.

He’s just like his dad, only coming up with the big romantic gesture at the last minute when he knows he has already screwed up, when people would just rather you be there for all of it. Maybe he needs to face the fact that he’s just not good at this, being in a relationship. He’s good at the buildup, the big romantic gestures all flash and passion but not this, just being himself in a relationship, because he’s a damn mess who can’t even take care of himself let alone a whole other person. And Jess deserves someone really good in her life to be her guy. It’s not him, but if it’s not him he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with all this love for her he has inside of him. It’ll eat him up inside whether he stays or goes. Maybe it should. Maybe that’s what he always deserved.

\---

Jess glances at the clock. It’s approaching 8AM. Now they really do have to go home. Nick has been quiet for a long while. The bottomless well of conversation within him seems to have run dry. He's subdued now, his chin resting on his folded arms on the bar. He’s looking down into his tumbler. He tilts the glass and watches the last dregs of his drink swirling among the half-melted ice cubes. She rests her hand on his shoulder.

“Time to go, Nick?”

He looks over at her and his eyes snap back to reality from somewhere far away. 

“One more drink, Jess?” he asks her, a slight desperate edge to his voice. She shakes her head at him. She is already up and headed towards the door.

He wants to pull her back. He wants to tell her to stay here. Everything will always be this perfect, frozen in time to this perfect moment. He’ll convince her that they can live at this bar forever. They’ll survive on liquor and maraschino cherries. But she’s already at the door waiting for him. They have to go back to the real world. He feels the entire night run through him and he’s Sad Nick again. It’s tomorrow and it’s over. He can’t keep pretending that it’s still nighttime and that he and Jess are a couple. It's over. The Universe gave him those few extra hours with her just like he wanted. He can't ask for anymore. 

He's sitting at the bar looking over at her near the doorway. He can see this is really a metaphor for their relationship. She’s always leaving and he can’t ask her to stay. He can’t even find the words to explain to her why she should. It’s just him alone at the bar again like he’ll be the rest of his life without her. He throws back the rest of his drink and leaves the bartender a big tip. He gets up to follow her out.


	7. Dead Man Walking

They’ve left the bar and are walking down the street back to the parking garage. 

They’ve stopped holding hands because Nick has been walking really slowly, dragging his feet. Jess didn’t want to have to keep pulling him down the street so she is walking ahead of him. She turns every so often to make sure she hasn’t lost him. He’s been quiet and subdued ever since they left the bar. The strum of tension is between them again. It feels like he’s been deliberately avoiding her gaze, his eyes looking everywhere else, at anything else but her. He keeps looking in the shop windows like he’s trying to find something, his hand skimming along the glass displays. She doesn’t know if it’s just in her head or because he’s just tired from staying up all night but she thinks he’s got that haunted, hunted look about him like he’s about to do something crazy again. She can see all the tension he’s holding in his jaw. He’s grinding his teeth like he does when he’s nervous. She hopes he doesn’t take off running or she’s going to have to chase him in these heels.

\---

Nick knows he’s being an asshole because he still doesn’t want to go home. He knows this was only a temporary reprieve from their fight and despite their wild, crazy night out together, nothing has really changed. But there’s still that inner voice in his head telling him that if he stalls long enough Jess might change her mind. _About their relationship. About him. About living a life where they belong to each other._ She’ll say the fight was the mistake and not the driving out to the desert in the middle of the night, that she was glad he did this because it saved them and she’ll remember why she loves him and then everything will be good again and they’ll be happy like they’re supposed to be. And then next year they’ll come back here again to celebrate their anniversary and they'll laugh about the time he made her so mad he had to drive them both to Vegas to make it up to her.

He’s terrible at lying to anyone else but it turns out he’s pretty good at lying to himself. That's really what he has been doing ever since they uncalled it at the wedding, pretending that any of the things he did would change the outcome of his life, knowing the entire time that he was hanging on to their relationship by his fingertips, that no matter what he did he would lose her. So he drags his feet to stay in this delusion a little while longer trying to put off the inevitable. In his head, he can dress it up as 'nonviolent resistance' against his fate, but he knows it’s basically the equivalent of him throwing a tantrum in the middle of the street like a little kid while Jess acts calm and rational, ever the adult like she always is, treating him with kid gloves because he’s a child who needs someone like her to explain feelings to him because he’s too dumb and immature to understand his own. She’s just been playing make-believe with him tonight because she’s generous and kind and giving and she knows he can’t really deal with adult decisions or life in general. She can’t love him back but she can do this kindness for him one last time, even though very shortly he won’t be her responsibility anymore. Maybe that will be a relief to her. Maybe after really getting to know him over the course of an entire year, she finally took off her rose-colored glasses and saw him for what he really is, that when he said he was broken he meant it and if she wants a good life, a happy life, he can't be her boyfriend, can't be her anything. 

He looks through the plate glass windows into all the shops they pass, at all the fancy, expensive shit no one needs. He thinks fleetingly of pulling Jess into one of them. She had been so happy being with him when he did that before. Even if he knows it's futile, even if he knows it might already be over and she's already made up her mind about them and everything that is going to happen once they get home, he clings to that fact. _He can still make her happy._ That is something he is still capable of doing, right here, right now, while everything hangs in the balance between them. He has all this cash now so he can pull a “Pretty Woman” and buy out an entire store just for her. He'll get her a whole new closet full of pretty dresses. She would model all those outfits for him like some gorgeous pinup girl and he would get to tell all the shop people that she was his girl and she could get whatever she wanted and not even have to look at any of the price tags because money was no object and he wanted to spoil her just because. She would put on all those new outfits and stay Vegas Jess forever, someone who thinks him driving 300 miles to the middle of nowhere at midnight is exciting and fun instead of reckless and stupid like all his other life decisions. He would get to take Vegas Jess home with him and she would throw out all her Regular Jess clothes, everything except that red sundress because he fell in love with her in that so she had to keep that one, but the rest could go, all her responsible clothes that made her hate him, dressing her up in Disappointed Jess, which is the version of her he likes least. 

\---

A quaint little wedding chapel pulls into view on the path in front of them. Its front doors suddenly burst open and a newlywed couple comes running out laughing and holding hands. Nick and Jess both stop on the street to watch them. The bride is holding a bouquet of pink tea roses and is wearing a simple knee-length white dress done in satin lace. The groom is wearing a slightly rumpled blue suit and has his tie undone. They are both clearly drunk on booze and each other, giddy and glowing with happiness. They pause outside the chapel doors and the groom leans in to whisper something in the bride’s ear that makes her blush prettily. She tucks her face into the crook of his neck. The groom puts his hand under her chin to tilt her face back up to kiss him. The bride throws her arms around his neck and pulls him closer to her. They end up passionately kissing each other on the street, hands all over each other, blissfully ignorant to the rest of the world around them. They're the lucky ones who still believe that happiness is just that easy, that you can choose another person and you can stay that happy forever. They have yet to learn about the overwhelmingly depressing odds that await them in the future. They don't know that this is the outlier, that this moment is the happiest that they will ever be and everything afterwards is just chipping away at the love you thought you had with someone until there isn't anything left holding you to that person who you thought you loved more than life itself and who you thought loved you back in the same way, once.

 _God, can he even remember being that happy?_ Nick thinks he can but now he’s not so sure. He remembers lying on a beach in Mexico with her and being that happy and it had felt real then, but maybe his mind is playing tricks on him and it's just nostalgia giving that rosy hue to their entire relationship together. Even if those feelings were real, maybe things like that can't last. They can only exist outside of your regular life in places like Mexico or Vegas. Happiness like that is too fragile. It can't survive the daily wear and tear of actual living. That's why fairy tales always end at the "happily ever after," at the romantic reunion or the wedding, because no one wants to face the truth that happiness isn't something you're allowed to keep, that the fire of passion and the warm glow of new love always turns bitter given enough time.

They aren't in their real lives now though and he still wants to believe in happily ever after, wants to believe that if every other universe tears them apart, that there is still a chance that this is the universe where they stay together, that there is still a chance that that outcome exists for them, that he can still make their love story play out the way he saw it in his head when he kissed her that first time, when he made her look at him the way the girl looks at the romantic hero in every single love story since the beginning of time. He can’t tell her what he’s thinking…that he’s actually thinking about going into that chapel and getting married to her right now if it makes this real, if it means he gets to keep her, if it keeps them together, even though that’s fucking insane at this point. Who the fuck gets married to end an argument? But it feels like something he would do. It wouldn’t actually end the argument though. All that stuff is still there waiting for them, lurking under all the good feelings of the night. 

He thinks he always thought he was going to get married to her, but he knows he’s not ready to yet, not now. Not because he doesn’t feel those things, but because he knows he’s not who he needs to be yet to really deserve her. He can’t tell her that, can’t tell her about how his life has always been and will always be a war that he needs to fight alone, that he might never make it to that Promised Land, that she’ll always be waiting for him to catch up to her, to be ready for all those adult milestones that come so easily to everyone else, and how he’ll always be less than what she deserves.

He can’t give her the words so he reaches out for her hand instead. He squeezes it and wished she could feel everything that he’s feeling at this very moment. He can’t just tell her anymore. He's back to being closed off from her. She used to be so good at listening to him and now she can’t hear what he’s trying to tell her. He didn’t know when that happened. She used to always be on his side, have his back, be in his corner, and then one day she wasn’t. 

\---

Jess turns to look into Nick’s face and his expression is unreadable, watching that happy couple. He reaches out to hold her hand and squeezes it. She doesn’t know what that means, if it means he wants that or if it means he’s sorry that he doesn’t, but it feels nice. They’ve never talked about marriage and kids before their fight yesterday, not really, and she wonders if that’s actually something he even wants, if that’s a step he could ever imagine himself taking. He hadn’t really given her a clear answer before so the question hangs in the air between them. They've been together a whole year so she thinks that's enough time for him to know. She knows him so she knows he’ll force himself to imagine that future with her because he would never do anything to hurt her, that he would do everything in his power to keep from hurting her, even if in his heart of hearts, he really can’t picture a reality like that for himself. _Where is this relationship going?_ She knows Nick can't answer that question because he doesn't live his life that way. When he talks about the future, he jokingly calls that version of himself "Future Nick." She thinks he does that because it takes the pressure off of himself from having to make any real decisions about his life. Future Nick can do everything Present Nick can't but Present Nick doesn't know how to change, doesn't know how to grow up. He was always honest with her; he told her that before and she didn't know why she didn't listen to him then. Future Nick and Present Nick can never be one and the same. Future Nick isn’t real. 

Nick would totally be the kind of guy who would try to stay with her even when she’s drowning him, even when they’re drowning each other, and even when he knows he really isn’t happy. She doesn’t think he knows what he wants and he’s built her up in his head into someone who can decide his future for him and he’ll try to stay with her even if it hurts him. She's tried to accept him for who he is only to find out that she can't. She thinks she really isn’t the woman he deserves, who can see past all of his faults, even if she wants to be. 

He loves her, sure, but he doesn’t want the rest of it, and she does. That’s the dealbreaker. She doesn’t want to be the one pulling him towards those things if he doesn’t want them too. She doesn’t want to turn into the nagging wife, the ball and chain, someone he resents for forcing all those things on him. She can already feel it happening like they’re some bad sitcom couple, him the man-child who can’t take care of himself and her the long-suffering wife who has a stick up her ass about everything and is the one that doesn’t let him have any ‘fun’ even though that usually means they won’t have enough money at the end of the month to pay the bills or she has to be the responsible one taking care of their kids and being the housewife while he sits in his mancave and bemoans his lost glory days of being single and unattached, both of them falling into their roles of the bumbling, ineffectual husband and her the nagging shrew, his harpy of a wife. How much will 'love' matter then? It will be something they say to each other just out of obligation instead of freely given as the gift it should be.

Forget her perfect version of the future with the lake house, maybe she’s just running from that nightmare future where they are stuck together in a loveless marriage barely speaking to one another, spending endless sleepless nights lying in bed next to each other, resenting each other but both unable to leave. She’ll get mad at him for no reason, he’ll tell her what he thinks she wants to hear, they’ll never be honest with each other about what they really need, and nothing will ever change. 

She needs a partner and she doesn’t know if he can or wants to be that for her. She loves him but if he can’t or won’t be her partner, 50/50, everything right down the middle, then she knows she really shouldn’t be with him, no matter how tempting it is just to hug him to her and tell him she takes all of it back and all of that stuff she told him before doesn’t matter because they love each other and they’ll stay together forever. She has to be the practical one here. She’ll be the bad guy now so that she doesn’t have to be the bad guy later once they’re married and they have kids and it will be so much more difficult to pull away from each other, when they will be even more entangled in each other’s lives than they already are now. The sharp pain of it now will hurt less than the years of pain will hurt later. At the moment it’s hard for her to imagine how it could, but she knows how it was for her parents when they went through their long, messy divorce. She can't stand the thought of being separated from him in that way. She doesn’t want to put either of them through that and especially not if they have kids. So maybe he’ll hate her now, won’t understand why they have to do this, but maybe it’s better this way. He’s dopey in love with her so he can’t see how much they can and will hurt each other in the future, but she can see it coming for him, an atomic bomb threatening to blow everything in their lives apart and she’s the one who has to save him, save them both from it. 

She’s not the one for him. And she hopes maybe one day he’ll be able to see that future with someone else, even if it’s not with her.

\---

The couple disappears around the corner of the chapel and she and Nick continue on their journey down the street. They briefly go back to holding hands but he drops her hand when the parking garage comes into view and they continue walking on side by side. 

\---

Nick had only been tipsy at the bar and now he can feel himself getting progressively, annoyingly, painfully more sober as they approach his car, only leaving him with a sick dreading sadness inside, making him feel worse than the worst hangover ever could.

They finally reach his car. Jess is standing at the passenger side door waiting for him to unlock it for her so they can go home but he can't. He remains standing a few steps behind her. He’s breathing hard, the way someone does when they’re really upset. He doesn’t really understand why he’s feeling this way right now because physically nothing has happened, but he could feel the energy changing between them sometime between going to the bar and walking past the chapel on the way to his car. He is struck by the realization that whatever he does when they go home won't matter. This is it. What matters is this time right now. If he doesn't do something now, something drastic, it's over. He'll lose her.

“Jess,” he chokes out.

When she turns to face him, he pushes her up against the side of his car and kisses her desperately with all that he’s worth. 


	8. Unpause

Nick can feel the impending fight that they’ve been trying to outrun all night catching up to them. He tries to put off the inevitable for a little while longer. He holds her to him and kisses her desperately trying to lose himself in her. He wants to burn the feeling of loving her into every single one of his cells, wants to memorize this moment in time when she is still so painfully, exquisitely familiar to him, when he is still allowed to be this close to her. He closes his eyes and relives every single kiss he has ever shared with her. He kisses her with every part of himself, hoping he can make her feel the way he made her feel that first time he kissed her, hoping she remembers what it's like to love him back. He catches her off guard. She usually reciprocates even then, her body instinctively responding to his raw primal want for her even before her mind has a chance to catch up. But she doesn't melt into him the way she did then. Her mouth doesn't open under his to deepen the kiss. Her body doesn't mold into his hands responding to his touch. She doesn't throw her arms around his neck to pull him closer to her. _It's all wrong._ She puts her hands in the middle of his chest and pushes him back and that breaks the magic of the night. She’s never, ever done that before. She always lets him kiss her. They are back to how they were in the loft, like they had never stopped fighting. 

He’s still in her space and she’s breathing hard, slightly disheveled from his hands being on her. She’s pressed herself back against his car like she’s trying to get away from him. He’s never seen that look on her face before. She’s looking at him like he’s a stranger to her, like she doesn’t know him at all. For a split second it feels like he’s watching himself from the third person. He’s this menacing figure that’s bigger and stronger than her and he’s alone on the top of this empty parking garage with her, a tiny slip of a girl. And that look on her face? _It’s fear._ She’s acting like she’s afraid of him. That hurts him deeply. It cuts a mortal wound into his heart that there is even the remotest possibility that she would think about him that way, that she no longer sees him as a guy who protects her, someone she trusts to keep her safe. He fights the impulse to wrap his arms around her and bring her into his body, to place his gentle hands on her to comfort her the way he's used to. He forces himself to take a few steps back from her so there is space between them and he isn't crowding her in. 

“I don’t want to fight, Jess,” he says, panting. “We’re not broken up yet. We’re still a couple.”

“We can’t just pretend all that other stuff doesn’t matter, Nick.”

“It didn’t matter before.”

“But it matters now.”

“I love you and that should be what matters to you.”

She looks at him reproachfully. “Don’t throw that in my face, Nick.”

“I’m not. I’m just saying that if all that other stuff matters more to you than that, you never should have uncalled it. You should have dated some other guy that wasn’t me and you shouldn’t have told me that you loved me. You can’t just take it back now.” 

His hands are clenched into fists and his body is shaking from trying to contain all the raw emotion within himself. He has to walk away from her to the edge of the roof to calm himself down. He takes in a breath. He half turns back towards her again, looking at her with all that anger and hurt and betrayal in his eyes. “Why didn’t you just say no then? Why’d you let me love you?”

“We both wanted it. You wanted it too.”

"Yeah, but I still want it now and it’s not doing either of us any favors. Maybe I just don’t know what’s good for me. For anybody. If I was going to screw it up and lose you, maybe I wanted to lose you then, not after everything we’ve been through together. Not after I know what it feels like to love you, to be in a real relationship with you. How do I fix this, Jess? Tell me how to fix this. What did I do wrong?” 

“You didn’t screw up, Nick. You didn’t do anything wrong. We’re just different people.”

She's trying to be comforting by shifting the blame away from him, absolving him of any responsibility he has had in bringing them to this point in their relationship, but she doesn’t know that her saying that to him is probably worse. If he had screwed up he could just apologize and do better next time, fancy-fix it, the way he fixes all those broken things in the loft. But she’s saying there’s something fundamentally wrong about the way they fit together, something fundamentally wrong with him that makes his love not enough for her. And out of all the reasons for them to break up that can’t be it. His life doesn’t make sense without her next to him. To him, it feels like he spent his entire life waiting for her and he’s still losing her.

“Love is just a feeling, Nick. People fall out of love all the time.”

He can’t believe she’s saying that to him when loving her was the most important thing he ever did in his entire life. He wants to cover his ears, make her take back her words. If she really wanted to hurt him, that’s what does it. It feels like she just shot him in the chest. _Direct hit._ She doesn’t even say it in a vengeful or hurtful way. She says it in a matter-of-fact way like it had always been set in stone.

 _It wasn’t supposed to happen to us, Jess,_ he wants to yell at her. _How can you think we’re just like everybody else?_ She wasn’t supposed to be just another girl to him, another failed relationship in a long line of them. He thinks back to when he first met her and she was all about feelings sticks and trying to get him to open up and trying to get him to talk to her about all those messy feelings he didn’t like sharing with anyone and suddenly she’s this cold, rational person he doesn’t recognize. He wondered when she changed. Maybe it was being around him. She made him better but he made her worse. He has all these feelings he wants to tell her about now but she’s the one saying that they don’t matter, that they have no place out here in the real world and she doesn’t want to hear him tell her those things anymore. He always thought of himself as the pragmatist while she was the head-in-the-clouds, starry-eyed dreamer, but turns out it’s the other way around. He fell head over heels for her the moment she walked through the door and into his life, but it was really just him chasing impossible dreams again.

He approaches her until he’s standing directly in front of her again.

“I would never stop loving you, Jess,” he says with absolute conviction.

“You don’t know that, Nick. Spencer said that he loved me; Caroline said that she loved you…People fall out of love all the time,” she repeats.

“That’s not the same,” Nick argues. “Spencer was a douchebag who cheated on you. Caroline wanted me to be somebody I wasn’t…” The realization of what he just said passes between them. He realizes that’s the same thing that’s happening now and that shuts him up. He struggles for the words to describe why Jess is different, why this time is different. He lets out a growl of frustration, running his hands through his hair when he can’t. “It’s just different,” he insists.

“You can’t even say you think about our future.”

“I never said I didn’t though,” he said defensively. “I just didn’t think about the future you want us to have, but I always thought of you in it.” He’s frustrated because she isn’t hearing him. He went to fucking law school and he still doesn’t have the words to win this fight with her. He’s pleading and desperate, trying to hang on to her, trying to make her change mind. He’s fighting for his life here, for the life that he wants that he thought she wanted too, but she doesn’t seem to want it anymore, doesn’t seem to want him anymore. The most important fight of his life and he can’t win it. 

“I need more, Nick.” 

“I’m just me, Jess.” He’s trying to put everything into that statement. He loves her and it’s not enough.

He’s looking at her with anguished eyes, feeling everything and not knowing how to put it into words. It kills him that his love for her has become a burden to her, that all those warm feelings she had for him would turn acrid and bitter, that when she looks at him she can only see what he isn't, everything he is never quite measuring up to what she needs him to be. 

He actually does want those things like marriage and kids and a house he can call his own but he’s never been good at figuring out all the concrete steps to get there. It’s always just been easier to think about some fantastical future where they live on Mars. Both of those futures seem equally likely in his head. She hadn't been listening to what he was really saying though. That no matter what kind of crazy future he ends up in, he had always imagined them there _together_ in it. He can't give her any more than that because she already has everything he is. _What more could you want from me, Jess? Everything I am belongs to you._ She hadn't heard him and he was bad at words, at expressing all the messy things that were inside his head and about why he can’t picture their future together like she can, so he couldn't tell her in a way she could understand. He's not a guy with a life plan; he's someone fundamentally broken trying to fight his way through his life by fancy-fixing things because he can’t fix what’s broken in himself. He can't make it to that good future by himself. _He needs her._ He needs her to make him a better person. But who wants to be with someone who equates 'need' with 'love'?

He’s suddenly exhausted. He can’t fight for them anymore. He’s just done; he doesn’t have anything left. He feels the entire night catching up to him, everything he has tried to avoid dealing with by driving all the way out here to Vegas, running away from his real life to go live in some fantasy world where Jess still loves him, even though he already lost her back in the loft. Or even before that when he hadn’t been paying attention to how miserable she was being stuck in this relationship with him. He should have known she was unhappy. Had he just not been listening? Missed all the signs she gave him? There were probably a million different ways that she told him that it was over. And he knows he could spend the rest of his life running their whole relationship back through his head trying to pick apart all the details to find all the mistakes he had made and he would still miss them. _It was him._ He had been the one looking at everything through rose-colored glasses when she had been seeing a glass half full of compromises and broken promises and not-enoughs. Maybe there just isn’t anything left here worth saving.

He lowers himself to sit down on the concrete. He puts his head in his hands. It’s just him and her on the roof of this empty parking garage at eight in the morning. He leans back against his car. His head tilts upward to stare blankly out into the empty sky.

“I told you we should have stayed in Mexico, Jess,” he says ruefully. “We can’t make it out here.”

She reaches down to comb her fingers through his hair the way she knows he likes. His eyes meet hers briefly. Cold comfort now, trying to pacify him like a little kid when she just ripped his heart out, when his heart is splattered all over the concrete, his entire world shattered into a million little pieces he can never put back together again. She wanted him to grow up and he knows this is what being an adult is…getting your heart broken and still having to pretend everything is normal, just get on with the rest of your life when all you really want to do is crawl into bed and cry everything out and never get up again. Does tomorrow even exist anymore? If it does, he’d really rather not wake up to face it. He’d rather just stay up here on top of this parking garage for the rest of his life because a part of him just died up here and he can’t ever get it back again.

He forces himself to get up from the concrete. She goes to hug him to her but he puts his hands up and backs away from her. He shakes his head at her.

“Let’s just go home, Jess,” he says tiredly. 

He goes around to the driver’s side and unlocks the car. He slides into the driver’s seat and waits for her to get into the passenger's side. He starts the ignition and they make the long journey home, driving back to their real lives. 


	9. Ocean (Guarding the Wallets)

He’s driving them home but he doesn’t drive right to the loft, he drives to the beach instead.

He parks his car and gets out to walk out onto the sand. She sits in his car and watches him. He stands for several long minutes on the shore looking out at the water.

It’s noon on a Sunday and the beach is deserted. It’s not a beach day. It’s all windy and the sky is gray, threatening rain. 

He’s still in that fancy suit but after a while he takes off his shoes and his socks and he just starts walking into the ocean in all his clothes just to remember what it felt like to run into the ocean that first time, to not be afraid of things. 

He’s standing in the ocean with the water up to his knees and she gets out of the car and wades out into the water to stand next to him. She reaches out to hold his hand. He doesn’t clasp her hand back to hold hers like he usually does. His hand hangs limply at his side. He doesn’t look at her.

"We’re broken up, Jess,” he says in a flat tone, looking out at the horizon, accepting his fate. He has to go home and pretend they’re ‘just friends’ and that he doesn’t love her. He loves her and it just doesn’t matter anymore.

He takes his hand out of her grasp and walks back to the shore alone. She trails behind him through the water. He sits down on the sand with his knees drawn up to his chest. He rests his elbows on his knees looking out at the ocean.

He reaches into his pocket and hands her his keys. “You want to drive home, Jess? I just want to sit out here for a little while; I can walk home.”

He doesn’t really want her to leave but they’re not a couple so he’s not going to ask her to stay. In spite of everything though, she knows him still, knows when he wants her to stay even if he doesn’t ask. So she sits down next to him on the sand to wait for him, to wait until he’s ready to leave.

\---

They end up falling asleep next to each other on the beach. His body spoons against her unconsciously but he moves away from her once he realizes that’s what he’s doing so that he isn’t touching her and there is space between them. 

After a few hours, he wakes up. He squints into the bright afternoon sunlight. Jess is still slumbering peacefully next to him. He shakes her gently to wake her up. “Time to go home, Jess,” he says to her.

They get back into his car and he takes them the rest of the way home.


	10. Letting Go

They’re sitting in his car in the parking spot outside the loft.

He’s putting all the stuff in the backseat back into his ‘go-bag,’ taking his time and putting it back in all nice and neat. He’s stalling because once they go in there they’re broken up and he doesn’t want them to be. Once he’s done he slides it back under the backseat. He turns to her.

“Jess, do you remember why you uncalled it?” he asks her again.

She looks at him and she still can't remember but she knows she loves him still, even if he’s not the guy for her, the guy in her life plan. But if she can’t remember she can’t tell him that, hurt him more with her words than she has already, get his hopes up for something that can’t happen between them, so she looks away from him so he can’t read that in her eyes and opts for silence.

He’s sad but he understands. He accepts it. She might think he’s immature and that he still needs to grow up but she doesn’t see that he’s grown a lot already just by being with her, that he never would have been able to accept something like this if he had never met her. He knows that it hurts now but it isn’t like it was after Caroline left him where it completely destroys him. He thinks about her making her way under his skin, her love making its way into the fibers of his being and making him strong. And even though their relationship ended, she was still good for him in ways he could never describe to her and she would never know. He’s a different person now, a better person because he met her, because she was in his life and he got to love her.

Sometimes things just don’t work out. It’s not like the movies where you fall in love and stay in love forever. As much love as there can be between two people, sometimes life just gets in the way. He looks at her and thinks about what it means to love another person, to be grateful that you got to love that person as long as you are able to with as much of yourself as you are able to until you can’t anymore and you have to let them go.

He reaches out and brushes a strand of hair back from her face. That tender gesture makes her turn to look back at him. His hand stays on her cheek and he looks into her face for a long time, memorizing what it’s like to see her this close up for the last time. He takes a deep breath like he is steeling himself before he pulls his hand back and turns away from her. He opens the car door and exits the car. 

He still waits for her to leave the car and reach his side. He reaches over to hold her hand. They enter the building and walk up the stairs together with their hands clasped, the way they have been doing for the past year. They reach the loft door. He opens it and they let each other go.


End file.
